I’m baaaack!

I’m baaaaaack!

Apparently no one at Too actually noticed I was gone. There’s a come-uppance for you. :)

It was a wonderfully productive three days. I finished the TBF revisions, aside from a nit here and there that I’ll take care of today or tomorrow. Probably tomorrow. The only awful thing that happened was the computer, for some reason, decided to lose about two hours worth of work. I honestly have no idea what went wrong. I’d been saving religiously and making backup files, and it just went *fwip*, gone. But I was able to recreate what I’d lost (after cursing roundly for a while), and so all was well.

I did the synopsis for PHOENIX LAW, and I’m actually pretty happy with it. (Synopses are hard!) I got a bit done on the proposal for the next three Strongbox Chronicles, which will feature a new character, and I got a few hundred words written on “Ill Met by Moonlight”, which is the working title for the eHarlequin short story.

Oh, and I woke up from a very vivid SF dream in the middle of the night on Tuesday and wrote it down, so not only did I get all the things I wanted to worked on, but I also came home with the very bare bones for another book. Go team go!

I should have brought a camera. It’s so gorgeous out there, and the fog on the lake every morning was just beautiful. Mostly it rained (I did not go swimming), but since I was tucked into the cabin anyway, that didn’t matter at all. I got away with only about 5 bug bites (which, when you’re using an outhouse for three days and four nights, is quite the miracle) and I managed to kill all the little bastardly bloodsuckers before they actually got to suck my blood. They merely poisoned me. Still, one takes one’s victories where one can. :)

I slept when I would normally have taken walks, because I didn’t feel like dealing with bug spray, and no way was I going to walk without it. My sleep schedule is all goofy now. :) The lil’ space heater was perfect (I left it at the cabin, because I don’t have an overwhelming need for it at home, and the Lyses can now use it if they don’t want to build a fire in the wood stove!) and I wasn’t cold at all. I brought more than enough food, and discovered that while I once considered Dinty Moore beef stew to be a guilty weakness, I now think it tastes like rabbit vomit. Next time I will prepare more home-cooked foods to bring out and heat up.

It was a *really* *great* retreat. Next time I have revisions to do, I will remember the cabin *sooner*!

I came home to read all about the RWA Nationals kerfluffle and to be glad I wasn’t there after all, and to pictures of my nephews who are *astoundingly* cute, and to email from my agent with some notes about FIREBIRD DECEPTION and a comment that I kept turning in manuscripts that made her feel like she wasn’t working at all. I think that’s a perfectly wonderful compliment. *beam*

There was also a note from the assistant editor at Harlequin saying the CARDINAL RULE AAs were in the mail and would need to be back at HQN by the 18th. *laugh* That makes three, count ’em, three, projects due in the third week of August. The CR AAs also make for the 3rd book(novella) I’ll have put to bed, which makes me run around going *boggle*. *boggle*! Just like that! *boggle*

Poor Ted is turrible sleepy (he doesn’t sleep well when I’m not home), but I’m awful glad to see him, and Shaun is downstairs painting cabinets, for which he is wonderful. And I am feeling insanely relaxed and rested and capable of leaping tall buildings in a single bound, which is a damned good thing, because there’s a whole lot to do in the next ten days.